Dear Testicular Cancer

I haven’t posted much in the last week. I guess I’ve been able to start focusing on other things than the treatment and cancer, which is very good. My mind starts to function again on a more normal level. I am more relaxed and I don’t freak out about every little pain I feel. In fact I haven’t even felt the tiny infection in my left testicle anymore. Vitamins A,B, C and E, Isoflavones, Q10 as well as a ton of green tea have become my daily companions. I definitely don’t want to give cancer another chance. I have also started to exercise once a day on the bicycle for 10 to 15 minutes. I’ll move up slowly since I’m quite out of shape as I’ve noticed.

Round two of chemo has gone by like a breeze. The first four days were as expected a little bit unfomfortable with flu-like symptoms, but definitely not as bad as the first round. The doctor has prescribed me some laxative which has helped a great deal with the constipation. It helps to know how the body will react. I again drank tea and water until I could not bare the taste of water anymore then I switched to apple juice and soy milk. Also rinsing my mouth with warm salt water helped with the taste a little bit. Supposedly it’s also good to strengthen the gums.

I am now in the second week. My blood results after week one were good. One more doctor visit and I will head back to New York. I will take things slowly but I have to start getting back into life. I have already my first job lined up with an old school friend in New York. I have not told him anything about the past few weeks. I don’t think I will.

I start to feel completely normal again. Every now and then the incision causes a little bit of trouble if I walk for longer stretches. Last night I had a dream about pain under my armpit which worries me, but I cannot tell whether it is only part of the dream or whether the pain is real. I have not experienced the pain during the day yet so it might just be a dream. I earlier had also a dream that my left testicle has moved up to my groins and that I need to push it back down, aaahhh. How painful. I remember that was the case with my right testicle because it was undescended when I was born. Supposedly those undescended testicles have a higher chance of getting a tumor than the ones that have desceneded on their own.

Anyway I need to keep my head busy in order for these nightmares to disappear. I have to move on. I started a new blog called WAITING FOR CHEMO I’ll be writing an entry every day until the chemo therapy is over and I moved back into my old appartment in New York which will be in approximately 6 weeks. Well who knows maybe earlier. The second dosis of chemotherapy is coming up in six days. I’ll be enjoying my life without poison until then.

Alright I don’t like any of those three options. Who would. Making a decision is stressful especially when there is no good option available.

After long dicsussions with my girlfriend, my family and my doctors, I came to the conclusion that chemo was the least worst option for my case.

My Beta HCG Values have dropped from a 14 to a 2 after 4 weeks which is a great sign that things are going better. There is a chance that the values could drop to zero but it might not which would mean that some micro cancer cells could be still floating around my lymph system.

So I will receive two dosis of about 700mg Carboplatin (Paraplatin for IV). And a bunch of antinausea medicine. The second dosis will follow three weeks after the first one.

There is a slight chance of infertility caused by the Chemotherapy. For this reason I will need to have my sperms checked to see if there’s enough skilled swimmers in there. That should be interesting

Read Article on urotoday regarding the new carboplatin option for seminoma stage I patients.

The probability that the removal of the testical has healed me completely is about 80-90%. Another doctor gave me a relapse rate of 70% and 80% because of the size of the tumor being slightly larger than average. It’s all statistics anyway and it boils down to whether I’m a half full or a half empty kind of person:

20% Chance that the tumor will come back within the next 5 years
80% Chance that nothing will ever happen again…

I was given two options for post surgery treatments to lower the relapse rate to ~5%:

Option 1) 10 Days of Radiation Therapy or

Option 2) Chemo Therapy : 2 Dosis 700mg Carboplatin (=Paraplatin)

Interesting Video found on google talking about the chemotherapy option

[...]the latest research shows an early stage of one type of cancer—seminoma–can respond just as well to a single dose of chemotherapy after surgery, rather than needing a three week course of radiation therapy. (source: www.empowereddoctor.com)

Honestly I am a bit overwhelmed with having to make this decision. I am worried about exposing my body to toxic medicine that could potentially cause more damage. On the other hand I am not convinced that the tumor has not spread a little bit, it has been in there for quite a while after all…

I signed up with this online support group:

TC NET Support

I have received great help and mental support from them. I highly recommend signing up (free) and telling your story.

I have met with the radiotherapy specialist. The options for post surgery treatments of testicular cancer are all a little confusing and irritating right now. Every option seems to affect the probability of a reoccurence of the tumor and at the same time also the probability of causing another, secondary type of cancer further down the road (10-15 years from now). I will post more once my clears up a little and I have done more research.